Kípatsi is the Matsigenka word for earth. For this native community, earth has always been the Amazon and even though they now have settled down, their relationship with nature remains their life’s matrix. However, such a bond is today corrupted by civilization, and the once pristine jungle has become a frontier area, the setting for their silent fight against illegal activities as well as for the preservation of their ecosystem. My work is constructed as a dialogue between the Matsigenka’s conception of nature, its reality and my own interpretation of it. I find and relay essential elements of the relationship between Nature and Man with the intention to inspire the viewer to rethink their own.

Nature is as much a narrator of the story as I am, hence turning towards alternative practices that increase its materiality, be it in substance or design. The imagineku prints (lit., images in her dreams), pictures printed on paper pre-tinted with local natural pigments, are the culmination of the process. Collected and prepared alongside the Matsigenka, their variations and imperfections are a testament of nature’s many characteristics and of the complex bond the Matsigenka have with it. These prints also open the door to a less visible yet not less important aspect of the Amazon life. They have allowed me to create a new world and narrative that translates the cosmogony of the Matsigenka. Many of the underlying ideas and concepts are invisible, if not impossible to understand for a foreign mind. Yet after listening to their stories and legends, I have tried to illustrate some of them, or more humbly, give them a substance that anyone might connect to.

Over several trips that covered most of the Matsigenka’s native communities in Madre de Dios (Peru), I have shared their lives and gotten a deeper understanding of their connection with the environment. After a thorough process that included on-field interviews, scientific research and accompanying NGOs, I realized that a purely documentary focus was too limitative. Consequently I moved towards a more conceptual conversation where abstraction and sensations would better express the complexity of my subject. Fluctuating across both space and time, the reality of what is nature and civilization in the Amazon is not yet set in stone.